On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 12:49 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13 November 2013 10:55, <spudboy...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> if you want us to give up the bad, dirty, power, then please provide a
>> clean, affordable, abundant substitute. Faster, please.
>
>
> The Sun, of course. Produces millions of times more power than we need.
>
> Trouble is the fossil fuel industry doesn't want us to use it. Given the
> sort of effort ut into that that has been put into the "space race" or
> warfare we'd have this sorted by next week.

I have no doubt that the fossil fuel industry will try to prevent
this. I also agree that the effort put into wars is a horrible misuse
of human potential and that great things could be achieved instead.
Regarding solar power -- this could be the solution but it's sci-fi at
the moment. It's intuitive to look at solar panels and imagine fossil
fuels being replaced by this. It's less intuitive to visualise the
scale of the problem and the limitations of current technology. We
have a world population of about 7 billion now. It has doubled since I
was born, in 1976. It continues to grow at more than 1% a year and
this is an important part of the equation. Ultimately, the world's
energy budget is mostly spent on providing basic necessities to all of
these people. Food, heating, health care, schools and so on. I'm not
arguing that the resources are correctly distributed, but I am arguing
that this is what we mostly use the energy for. A lot of energy. The
large chunk of it currently comes from oil, coal and natural gas.
So the problems, according to my limited knowledge: current solar
panels are based on silicon, which is a scarce resource. The amount of
silicon available might not be enough for the total solar panel
surface area that we would need to remove our dependency on fossil
fuels. In fact, some people are suggesting that we already reached
peak silicon.
Another other issue is energy efficiency. Mining the raw materials and
then transforming them into solar panels takes a certain energy
budget. Then these panels last for some years. Then you have to build
new ones. The more you remove fossil fuel from the equation, the more
you have to rely on the solar panels energy to pay for the energy
budget of the next generation. Notice that you also have to store a
lot of energy because of seasonal effects, day an night and so on.
This takes some sort of capacitor with its own energy budget. I don't
think it's clear that all this could become self-sustainable with our
current technology. Remember that we still have to provide for the 7
billion humans while paying these energy investments -- and I mean
paying in terms of energy, doesn't matter if we're under cut-throat
capitalism or a socialist utopia, this economic fact remains.
In fact, defeating our dependency on fossil fuels and curbing our CO2
emissions are antagonistic goals. To bootstrap the great solar panel
farm we need a lot of energy upfront. The faster you want to do it,
the more of this energy has to come from fossil fuels. Then you have
two options: increase CO2 emissions or use energy that you would
normally use to keep the 7 billion people alive. The faster you do it
and the more you rely on the second option, the more human suffering
you will cause. We're mot talking about trivial inconveniences either,
we're talking about millions and millions dying from starvation, cold
and disease. It is tempting to assume that we can go back to a simpler
lifestyle and make do with less, but this regards that the current
carrying capacity was made possible by the energy budget provided by
fossil fuels. Before the energy revolution there were orders of
magnitude less human beings on earth, and the complexity of human
society was much lower. Organising 7 billion people to live somewhat
peacefully on a small planet is no trivial matter. You cannot
disregard economic and social effects. We are not talking about some
tribe here. A bit of politics, sorry -- part of the reason I am for
less government is that I think that this level of complexity vastly
outgrown human intelligence. Nobody can manage this, it has to be
self-organising to a large degree. And it is. Where there is more
central control, there is also more human suffering, case in point:
China. They had to resort to enforcing a child birth budget to manage
both the energy budget and the complexity.
The same principles apply to wind power and all other renewable source
we know of. They have horrible efficiency compared to fossil --
efficiency as in energy investments required vs. total yield. A
technology breakthrough could change things, but then we're relying on
something that might not even be possible.
Here's an interesting report that analyses both energy budget issues
and complexity:
http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Tipping-Point-Nov.pdf
Telmo.
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